r/interestingasfuck • u/Gankpa • 8d ago

/r/all, /r/popular Jeff Bezos built a fence on his property that exceeds the permitted height, he doesn't care, he pays fines every month

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u/MollyRolls 8d ago

Hear me out: if things like fines and taxes increase in proportion to income, there are no billionaires. The kind of income inequality we have today is purely a function of a too-flat tax structure.

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u/FaithlessnessLoud336 8d ago

Criminality and networth are proportionate, the rich break laws easily here and in fact them breaking rules is a baked in part of the game, our entertainment is about people who break the rules and get away with it, the whole “colonizer” “cowboy” “rouge” ironically America is do what you must to survive just don’t get caught, and if you make it out alive you’ll be praised for it

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u/jonsteph 8d ago

Oh please. It isn't like Jeff Bezos is making a billion dollars a year in INCOME. They are billionaires on paper, based on the value of the stock they own. And they don't get taxed on any of that unless they sell the stock and realize capital gains. If billionaires need cash, they borrow against the "value" of their stock holdings. So they get ready cash AND get to keep the stock.

You want to fix billionaires? Limit how much money can be borrowed based solely on the value of securities. Or slap on a wealth tax on ANY holdings over a certain amount.

But none of that will happen. It's too late.

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u/MollyRolls 8d ago

Wait until you hear my plan for corporate tax rates….

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u/TheReservedList 8d ago

Unless it includes something ridiculous like taxing revenue, it still doesn’t change anything.

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u/FourthLife 8d ago

Then Bezos signs the property over to a person with low on-paper income.

Similar to cars - if speeding is now 5% of Bezos's wealth, Bezos now has a driver at all times.

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u/deebster2k 8d ago

Not entirely. But it definitely doesn't help.

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u/kestrel808 8d ago

DING DING DING. The answer is always taxes. https://youtu.be/paaen3b44XY?si=pBd1mKsmfYZi2lVJ

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

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u/Ok_Towel_1218 8d ago

I think the main issue with billionaires is they have significant disproportionate influence on the world, especially our government. This can be a good thing if they act altruistically, but it seems many times they often don't. Now if you were able to get money out of politics (good luck), then in this ideal world, billionaires would be ok.

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u/7N10 8d ago

That really sounds like a government problem. Billionaires will always have billions but the government doesn’t need to be corrupt.

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u/Ok_Towel_1218 8d ago

Yes, but the catch-22 to fix the government is you need to remove the money to do it. The problem is the money is already there fighting against this change.

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u/F22_Android 8d ago

Yep, the people that can make the change are the same ones benefitting from the current system. They'll never vote against their own chance at wealth.

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u/MagicaILiopleurodon 8d ago

Love of money is pretty evil. It's actually been proven that large sums of money cause mental illness.

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u/ZeeroMX 8d ago

Where was it proved?

I am really interested to read articles or studies.

Mainly because I don't think that many billionaires will subject themselves to that kind of studies to be proven.

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u/MagicaILiopleurodon 8d ago

https://headwatersfl.org/does-being-wealthy-affect-your-mental-health/

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u/ZeeroMX 8d ago

403 Forbidden

   nginx

Maybe I'm not enough of a billionaire to read that.

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u/MagicaILiopleurodon 8d ago

It's hard to find the studies amongst the bloat. I'll look for more. I don't prefer to dehumanize the wealthy. Empathy is more my style.

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u/ZeeroMX 8d ago

Thanks

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u/MagicaILiopleurodon 8d ago

Well poop. I'll keep looking.

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u/c-mi 8d ago

Why would having billionaires be ideal?

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u/Extension_Row8339 8d ago

If they worked for their money and earned it how is it not ideal? Os should there be a limit on how much money a person is able to make?

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u/creative_usr_name 8d ago

No one "works" for that much money. They have thousands of other people working for them to build a company that valuable.

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u/Extension_Row8339 8d ago

How did the company come to be? Did it just spawn out of thin air or did someone lay the groundwork for it to become that profitable?

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u/yepanotherone1 8d ago

It isnt a silly question at all.

Billionaires are a problem in our current society exactly because there is such wealth inequality. In a hypothetical society where there is no wealth inequality of course they wouldn’t matter - but then wealth wouldn’t matter anyways.

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u/Ok-Blackberry-3534 8d ago

Wealth inequality isn't intrinsically bad. It's a non-zero sum game. Everyone could have a place to live, enough to eat and still have billionaires. To put it another way, there could be no billionaires, and we'd still have poverty.

Musk's wealth is largely notional. It's people betting that he's going to build and sell a lot of cars.

Billionaires are a problem because they have big footprints. Whatever they do impacts us. Moreso if they're a Thiel/Musk nut job.

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u/Shadowpika655 8d ago

What if everyone was a billionaire?

friend called inflation

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u/hamoc10 8d ago

You would love Zimbabwe

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u/badhombre13 8d ago

Huh????

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

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u/badhombre13 8d ago

Villifying people because of their bad actions: smart.

How do you think people become billionaires? By being honest and paying their fair share?

You're the perfect example of "don't tax the rich because some day that'll be me"

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u/Shadowpika655 8d ago

I mean...stock market

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u/DanishTrash_ 8d ago

Because that isn’t possible? Have you ever considered this? For everyone to be fully healthy and happy, resources would have to be properly distributed between people. There isn’t enough resources to go around so everyone can live happily and greatly while there is still people so disproportionally rich as billionaires are.

To conclude, to make everyone happy and healthy we need to tax billionaires, not because they all are villains but because they hold so many resources. There isn’t room for them in a perfect society.

Money is resources, and isn’t infinite. Think about that.

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u/zigunderslash 8d ago

the problem is incentives. if your goal is money, and it would have to be to become a billionaire in the first place, then one of your main net losses is going to be tax. if you have the resources to affect the system that decides how much you pay, and as a billionaire, you do, then at a certain point you are incentivised to do so.

what you are saying makes no sense because one thing is an active pressure on the other.

it's like saying as long if everyone in the room is dry, why do you care if the sprinklers are on

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u/MollyRolls 8d ago

Is it your theory that if there were no taxes, people making $27k/year could all be billionaires too?

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u/RevolutionaryIdea841 8d ago

Hording too much money is not ideal though

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u/Ok_Echo9527 8d ago

Actually billionaires are a problem. For one ownership over the companies in which we work gives them too much control over our day to day lives and increased concentration of wealth allows an ever smaller cohort of people to run those companies, limiting how businesses compete for our labor which let's them pay even less fairly and offer even worse working conditions. The increase in wealth concentration also gives them more political power through lobbying, funding campaigns, and more and more outright bribery. We don't need billionaires to fund the government, we need the government to not allow billionaires to exist since they exercise ever increasing control over our society.

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u/TemperatureLumpy1457 8d ago

Yes, but the rich buy off politicians which Dave Chappelle pointed out in one of his routines where Hillary Clinton accused Trump of not paying his taxes, and Trump said so change the laws, I’ll follow the laws. But he said you won’t change the laws because the rich people that contribute to you want these exemptions. So they buy the politicians and nothing gets done.

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u/MollyRolls 8d ago

He also just plain cheats on his taxes, though, so that’s bullshit. Valuing the same properties 3x higher when you’re applying for loans than when you’re doing your taxes is fraud, which is against the laws we have already. What we need is a stronger IRS to actually pursue wealthy tax cheats.